


Stopgap

by Stariceling



Category: Lackadaisy
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Angst, Comfort/Angst, First Aid, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Canon, Snapshots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-14
Updated: 2015-06-14
Packaged: 2018-04-04 08:55:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4131654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stariceling/pseuds/Stariceling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Viktor and Mordecai look after each other, at least long enough for the bleeding to stop.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [slr2moons](https://archiveofourown.org/users/slr2moons/gifts).



> Here's to my friend slr2moons who gave me a prompt, and then was very understanding when I somehow went shooting off in this direction instead.
> 
> If you missed the mini-comic [Photoplay](http://lackadaisycats.com/exhibit.php?exhibitid=400), go read it. Mordecai's sleeve garters fill me with joy.

“You vill haff to drive.”

Mordecai was still breathing hard, but he didn’t appear to be injured. Blood stood out on his white cuff and collar. It painted his face, with one drop like a vibrant tear on the white marking under his eye, and he was busy cleaning it from his glasses. All of it had come from dispatching the last participant in that ill-fated ambush. He had gone for the man’s jugular before Viktor could move to finish him off.

Viktor retrieved their shovel and returned it to the back of the truck with the crates of moonshine. It was usually a good idea to have it on hand. Except, apparently, when small-time runners got a hold of it and tried to hamstring him.

He limped the half dozen steps to the passenger side and climbed in, pressing his fist against the wound below his knee. He trusted Mordecai to at least drag the body where it wouldn’t be visible from the road.

What he didn’t expect was for Mordecai to come around to the passenger side, missing his black coat and jacket, with an armful of white cloth.

“I am not going to sit in a cab with you bleeding the whole way back. Let me see the damage so we can get this over with.”

Mordecai dumped the cloth in his lap, dead men’s clothes hacked into rough strips, and dropped a bottle of their successfully defended hooch into the foot well. If he was trying to ensure Viktor would be feeling no pain he would need more than one bottle, but the sentiment was there.

Arguing on principle didn’t seem worth it when his trousers were already soaked through with blood. Mordecai unbuttoned and rolled up his sleeves, trying to stare Viktor down in anticipation of a fight, while Viktor rolled up his trouser leg without comment.

Mordecai knelt to inspect Viktor’s leg, and Viktor heard a tiny wince of sucked in breath. The wound was deeper than he had expected, and still bleeding freely.

“I expect this it going to hurt.”

Mordecai reached for the bottle and pried the cork out. Viktor realized what he was doing the instant before he poured gin over the wound.

The alcohol seemed to sear into his flesh. Viktor grabbed the front of Mordecai’s shirt and hauled him up to snarl directly in his face.

To Mordecai’s credit, he didn’t flinch. His ears went flat back, and he looked more offended than anything. He grabbed Viktor’s arms so tightly that kitten-sharp claws needled him.

“I did warn you.”

Viktor growled deep in his throat, but relaxed his grip by degrees until Mordecai could pull free.

Mordecai’s hands were steady and comparatively gentle as he improvised a bandage. He focused on the wound only, ignoring Viktor looming threateningly. Once blood stopped immediately soaking through the cloth he reached up, blindly took Viktor’s hand, and positioned it to hold the bandage in place while he tied it.

Then he reached up to unfasten one of his sleeve garters, releasing the sleeve bunched up to his shoulder. He wrapped it around the top part of the improvised bandage, just under Viktor’s knee. The second one went around the top of his calf muscle. Both were stretched to their limit. Viktor was sure they would snap if he so much as flexed.

Mordecai took out his handkerchief again to finish the interrupted task of fastidiously cleaning the blood from his face. “That should suffice until you see a doctor.”

“No doctor,” Viktor muttered. “Alvays threatening to chop off legs.”

“No one is going to do anything of the sort. Besides, it obviously needs stitches.” Mordecai tilted his chin up, probably trying to look authoritative. The effect was somewhat marred by his pausing to wet the handkerchief in his mouth.

His bloodied sleeve crept down his arm, a reminder that the borrowed shirt didn’t quite fit. The way it hung loose around the shoulders, sleeves too long, prompted the illusion that he was smaller than he really was. Viktor remembered Atlas bringing him home as a skittish little stray not so long ago. He was still his most vicious when cornered. In fleeting glimpses he still looked lost.

Mordecai was old enough to choose his own trouble. He was confident enough to provoke Viktor without flinching. Viktor had mostly been letting him fend for himself, occasionally checking that he was keeping up.

Now Mordecai was keeping up well enough to look after Viktor, and Viktor was starting to think he should be doing the same.

“You still vill haff to drive.”

Mordecai straightened his shoulders and shoved his sleeve back into place. “I know.”


	2. Chapter 2

Viktor pressed a cloth over his wounds until the doctor could get to him.

It was not, Mordacai was distinctly aware, a _clean_ cloth. That was almost unbearable after the indignities he had already suffered. He thrashed in his partner’s grip, though it was difficult when he was half sprawled on the floor already. Viktor was crouching over him and seemed to have all the leverage at the moment.

“It isn’t bleeding that badly. If you would just let go-”

“Stop wiggling.”

Viktor only pulled him closer, and suddenly Mordecai was far more aware than usual that Viktor was very large and very warm and had a very strong musky smell. It wasn’t the most unpleasant smell in the warehouse by any means, not when the air stank of gun smoke and everyday smoke and burnt hair, but Mordecai was extremely aware that he was pressed up against a man whose scent seemed to stick in his sinuses and the back of his throat.

“Don’t you ever bathe!?”

“Stop complaining!”

Viktor kept one hand pressed tight over his side, his other hand holding the back of Mordecai’s shirt to keep him from escaping.

By the time the doctor reached them, Mordecai had sullenly resigned himself to the fact that Viktor had decided to ignore his protests in favor of keeping him from bleeding. He glared up at the doctor to say ‘look what I have to put up with,’ and for some reason the older man took half a step back as if he’d been threatened.

After a nervous throat-clearing, the first order was, “Lie down so I can take a look.”

“On the floor? It’s filthy!”

Mordecai was aware that his nerves were shot and he couldn’t seem to come back from that. It hurt to breathe. He knew perfectly well what bruised ribs felt like but there was something that still clawed under his sternum in panic because it _hurt_ to _breathe_. And his suit was ruined and it suddenly occurred to him that Mitzi was going to fuss about that and he could not deal with fussing, especially from someone who meant it. He could barely deal with Viktor angrily keeping him from bleeding on the floor.

Viktor shrugged off his trench coat and dropped it on the floor beside him. Mordecai looked at it, because it was easier than looking up at his partner at the moment.

“That is hardly an improvement,” he said, just to make sure Viktor knew there was not a single part of this situation he was happy with. He still took the offer, of course.

The doctor didn’t have the courtesy to acknowledge his complaint. He simply peeled Mordecai’s shirt away from his blood-soaked fur. Mordecai was quite aware of Viktor still standing over them, glaring at the warehouse in general, and at the doctor in particular. He thought he was feeling Viktor’s low growl vibrating through his bones more than hearing it.

Mordecai looked down at his bloody side. There were three stab wounds, two crossing each other and one laying close enough alongside that Viktor could cover all of them. He had a faint impression that he could still feel Viktor’s hand there, in fact, although he didn’t think he had been bruised. He watched as the doctor stitched the wounds closed and finally covered them with a bandage. A clean one. After the events of this evening that did something to restore Mordecai’s state of mind.

He took few deep breaths to remind himself that yes he was breathing, even if it came with pain and the stench of burnt hair. (He might prefer the musk, if he was forced to choose.)

Mordecai sat up with a slight twinge of newly-stitched flesh.

“Don’t try to move yet,” the doctor ordered.

Viktor helped him stand, then bent to retrieve his coat. Mordecai brushed himself off, more to feel normal again than anything else. His suit was almost certainly beyond repair.

“Ve get them back,” Viktor muttered, shrugging his coat on again. There was a dark promise in his tone. Mordecai expected to see him push for a revenge strike before sunrise.

“I’m going with you.”

Viktor shot him a grin that was all teeth and just a hint of warmth. “I know.”


	3. Chapter 3

Pain wasn’t enough to convince Viktor that he might be dying. It was when the pain faded that he started to wonder.

Someone was poking at his side. Viktor was aware that he’d been shot, but the full reality of that seemed to have relocated itself to the same distant place as the pain. Still, he set about prying his eye open so he could face whoever was poking his gunshot wound.

Mordecai was at his side. His steady hands were bandaging the wound. Viktor wondered if Mordecai had been daintily picking things out of his wound with those sharp little claws of his.

His suit vest and tie were neat. The only evidence of whatever shoot up they had been involved in was a bit of blood splattered on his starched collar and the cuff of his rolled-up sleeve. He always made an effort, even after a massacre.

With the bandage in place, Mordecai reached up to touch Viktor’s forehead briefly. The light behind him was warm and flickering, momentarily shaping his silhouette into something familiar but out of place.

He looked right into Viktor’s eye, eyelids lowered with a look of sympathy. Viktor couldn’t remember ever seeing anything like that look on his face before. There was a faint reddish stain on the white marking under one eye, as if he had cleaned away blood but not gotten it all. He murmured something Viktor couldn’t seem to gather into coherent words, let alone respond to.

Perhaps he didn’t think Viktor was awake, or perhaps that was all he wanted to say. Either way he turned and put his back to Viktor.

He sat at attention, as if guarding Viktor. His ears were up and alert. He held his usual handgun in a relaxed grip, with the muzzle pointed at the ground. He wasn’t expecting an immediate attack, but he was prepared for one just the same.

When the world went in and out of focus, blurry in ways Viktor couldn’t explain even to himself, the strict lines of Mordecai’s spine and shoulders were at least familiar.

Focused on this one familiar thing, Viktor reached for Mordecai’s open hand. At the last minute Mordecai moved, evading his grasp. He looked back at Viktor with his eyebrows arched, apparently offended by the mere attempt.

Viktor ran the backs of his fingers over Mordecai’s wrist. That way he wasn’t smearing his blood in his partner’s fur. Mordecai was still unruffled, of course, sleek and aggressively civilized as ever.

 _“You are too young to be an angel.”_ Viktor was fairly sure he should try again and say that in English, but he couldn’t seem to figure out where all the vowels went.

“You’re not dying,” Mordecai answered. His glasses seemed to have captured some of the flickering light behind him, because they hid his eyes. “I wouldn’t be here if you were dying.”

Viktor managed a faint laugh. That was perhaps the most comforting thing Mordecai could have said. They knew each other that well. Mordecai never would have sat there to watch him die.

Mordecai turned away again to continue his watch without an answering laugh. He seemed like a statue, but Viktor kept watching his neat form.

Scraps of light caught in Mordecai’s silky black fur and turned it almost dusty. It felt like a long time since he had seen that. He couldn’t seem to remember what they had set on fire this time. It was far enough away the smell of smoke was like a vague memory.

The fire must have died down, because eventually the world became dim and distant, until he couldn’t even see Mordecai sitting watch over him.

It took a very long time for Viktor to realize that the world was dark because his eye was closed.

The pain eventually returned. Mordecai was right. He wasn’t dying.

Pain also told him that Mordecai had never been there. The gunshot wound in his side was the worst of it, but then there was his knee. That was familiar now: angry and swollen and stiff even before he tried to move it.

That had been Mordecai’s parting shot. Apparently he thought Viktor needed something to remember him by.

Of course Mordecai wasn’t there. Of course he had left them. Even drugged halfway to heaven Viktor knew Mordecai would never wait around to watch something die.


End file.
